Policy. It shall be the policy of the executive branch to (a) strengthen enforcement of Federal law in order to thwart transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, including criminal gangs, cartels, racketeering organizations, and other groups engaged in illicit activities that present a threat to public safety and national security and that are related to, for example . . . intellectual-property theft.

Theft here suggests a crime – and so we are probably talking primarily about criminal copyright infringement and identity theft.

I see the parallel that you may be driving at, but would point out that the criminal aspects in copyright were there long before the fact of digital copying provided the analog to your 3D capabilities in the patent world.

In other words, the advent of such capabilities are not (necessarily) tied to any driver for the role of criminal laws.

There is in fact a counter movement based on the ease of digital copying that seeks to eliminate (or drastically change) copyright protection as it is known today – which is part of why I responded to DanH as I did below.

Aside from any political sniping (in other words, no matter who is in the President’s Office), one has to wonder why one IP item stemming from the Constitutional IP clause even has “transgression as a criminal offense” while the other does not.

Maybe a genuine legal discussion on this point might interurpt the usual rants…

Everything this administration does seems like a hastily cobbled together “add on”.

There has never been this much rank incompetence in the White House and, hopefully, there never will be again. The most important question is how much damage can they do before they get thrown out. At the moment, the media is still carrying water for these cl ue less h@ ters, waiting for some “pivot” towards competence and sanity that is never going to happen.

Imagine how Republicans and our “liberal media” would have responded if Obama had pumped Michelle’s new line of clothing on national TV. Oy. What a nightmare.